FASTEST Way to Make Money Online NOW

The leading poll this time was how to start a successful online business. I think it just starts with figuring out what are you selling? And when you start with what are you selling, you go to the next level of how can you start selling something to make money faster? A lot of people, when they're starting, they're selling something that takes way too long to get going. I think people take too long to start making money. And when you're not making money, it's hard to keep going on your dream when nothing is coming in. And so what's the fastest path to start making more money? So finding a faster way to get started with the thing that you're selling so that I can make money more quickly. And that's where usually it's some kind of service. I'm a big fan of starting with a service over a product because products take time to be able to make, and I want you making money faster. So what can you do at the beginning to, yes, trade your time for money? Because you're trading— if you're at a job or doing something else, you're trading your time for money there. I'd rather trade my time for money doing something I love and helping people, which then also allows you to make better products and services. Like Built to Serve, the book— how do you write a good book? Built to Serve, I wrote pretty quickly. I wrote a third of the book on 16-hour drive to and from New York with a broken neck while Nina was driving because I had to get to New York and I broke my neck and I couldn't fly. They wouldn't let me on a plane because of the pressure would impact my neck. So we had to drive there. It's like 8, 9 hours from Toronto and Nina drove and I wrote a third of the book in the car sitting next to her. There's a section in the book where I say, this is kind of weird to write because Nina's right next— I was talking about Nina and she's right next to me. Like, this is a weird part to write because she's right next to me as I'm typing this out. I could write it that quickly because of all the work that I had done to help people. So a book, a great nonfiction book where you're giving advice, is basically coaching at scale without any feedback. Same thing, speaking on stage is coaching at scale without a lot of feedback. When you're coaching somebody and you tell them something, give them some advice, they give you some kind of rebuttal. They— you feel like where they're struggling. You can get a lot more personal, but when it's in a book, they're still thinking the same thing, but they're not telling you. When you're creating the course, same thing. When you're speaking, same thing. And so before going to a book or course or speech, I'm a much bigger fan of doing the work to help people so that you know what their resistances are, you know what the feedback is gonna be, that then when you move to a bigger audience, you can already address most of those issues because you've done it so much before in the one-on-ones. So I think it, I think it doing a service first pays you immediately, which is awesome, and also helps you make better product and services because you've got more experience in helping people. So that was the topic of the day. Now we usually throw it over Q&A, whatever you got for me. There's a little reactions thing at the bottom that you can use. If you click on the reactions face, you can then raise your hand. and we'll bring people up. You just will unmute you and ask your question and try to help as much as possible. Tanya, she was on, she was on Front Stage at the Build to Serve Challenge. That was fun.

I want to, to, to, to, I don't know if the word is correct. I want to launch a course because I already have the experience. I know the, I mean, I know what to, what would be useful for people, in this case, international students. I know how to help them to, you know, through the whole process of from starting from their countries to get here to Canada. I know all that, like, I know that I have the experience. I've been doing it for so many years, 14 years, so I know that, but I don't know how to make it attractive, like the structure and how to launch it. That's the part that it's kind of like you know, detaining me from, from finally put this, uh, everything in place and being able to launch and to, and to put the course together.

Yeah, so I mean, it's— you could do it through videos, you could do it through PDFs, you could do it through PowerPoints. You can give people part of it also, like the forms and how to fill out the forms. Right? If you're trying to get into Canada, what are the forms that people need to fill out? And give them the templates so that they can do it right. And I think if you can position it as the education and the experience that you've— like, you know how to get it done, so that you have the wisdom plus the templates. Here's how you— because those government forms are terrible, like, none of them make any sense, right?

But I wouldn't be directed into the immigration part because that's very— it's very too much liability, and it changes a lot, so it is hard to coach at distance about that. I wouldn't go that way. I would be more interested, or I think that it would be more useful to create what you were saying today in the morning, something that it's not limited by time, like something that is going to be good now and maybe 5 years later, because laws change too much. Immigration law changes too much, so it wouldn't be that good idea to focus in the immigration part. I would create, and my thinking is create a chapter about immigration, like immigration Immigration 101, kind of like give them an initial insight about it, but make it more about education and the process of, you know, deciding and starting and finally going through the process of selecting a school, what's best, what type of education they are looking for, like guide them through from the beginning to the end till they, you know, find the school and they get to Canada, but more from the education point of stand or What point of view?

So I mean, the reality with any course is it will need to have some updating because even in, even in the, the only thing that wouldn't be updated is if you're talking, you know, mindset or belief or any of the personal development stuff. But if you're helping pick between schools, like which school am I going to go to, even if we're ignoring immigration, which school do you pick? Well, things might change about the school, or a school might go out of business, or a school might merge with another school, or You know that, so you, you have to think about, you'll be updating the course probably once a year as a commitment.

Yeah, that would be okay.

But so even in that, then, like, if you can package the wisdom to know, because you've done it and you have the experience with the templates. So even if the templates are not going to be government related, you still have to apply to the school. You still have to fill out different, you know, so like the more that you can have done-for-you stuff in there as well that they can copy and paste and walk through, it's just an extra layer on top of just the wisdom.

And then if we talk, if you circle back to what we talked about on the Build to Serve Challenge with the concept of love and helping educate Latin American women, uh, mothers, Latin American mothers, was it Yeah, that would be my ideal group, like mothers with children and that are in a situation that they would need some skill to move forward, like some additional skills to move forward. And that would be language, English.

So if part of that is, hey, by buying your package, I also can support a class.

That's good. That's great.

It's not the whole thing, but it's a nice add-on that, hey, if I buy your course, if I spend however much money to buy your course, It also helps me buy a class to help 30 mothers in Latin America learn some English to improve their skills this week, right? That's how you stand out as your, your business. And then, and then, so that's the, like, that's the, that's the course. You have your course with either videos or PDFs or PowerPoints. Then you have your templates that they can fill out, that you guide them through the process of how to fill it out, or create your own templates for You know, we have a Built to Serve— there's the Built to Serve book, but there's also the worksheets that go with the book.

I saw, yeah.

So that's a template. Like, I'm creating a template for people because there's the book, but then, hey, here are these sheets that you can help fill out and we'll guide you through how to do it. So what are the templates that people can have in addition to the wisdom? And then if they feel like they're connecting to something bigger, so it's not just about them, but they're also helping mothers in Latin America learn English to get, you know, more freedom for themselves. That's the, that's the cherry on top.

Um, that's nice. Thank you.

So that's what I'd look at for the course. And then promoting it, it's content and also who can help you promote it. You know, who, who is talking to these students before they did make this decision that they might help make introductions for you, uh, maybe even take a referral fee. For them making those introductions.

Okay, thank you very much.

Cool, good luck. The first question that came in on the poll was, how can we focus on one thing with too much information? So at the beginning of anything, it always can feel overwhelming, right? If you're thinking about, I want to start on YouTube, I want to start on social media, I want to start writing my book, I want to start like whatever new project you want to start, It always feels overwhelming. It always feels like it's too big. It always feels like you don't have enough information. You can't wrap your head around what's going on. And so what I like to do is just trying to figure out where are the boundaries? Like, what is it that I actually need to learn? And at the beginning, I get super frustrated of any project, just trying to figure out where are the gates? 'Cause I love optimizing. I love efficiency. I love making things as tight as possible. But at the beginning, creativity is messy and you can't, prematurely optimize something. We try to optimize too soon when you don't know the boundaries, you end up not being able to make any progress. So at the beginning of any project, I will take some time, sit in my frustration and just basically try to figure out where the gates are around it. So what's the most recent one? I think, um, figuring out AdWords, um, and advertising has been one of those things for me in figuring out, okay, what ads do I run? How do I put them up? What are the placements? What, what's the conversions? The demographics, you know, all of the things that seem overwhelming at the beginning. And it's frustrating to know which ads to serve to which audiences and just testing, testing, testing, testing until I kind of get a sense of, okay, this is where the gates are, and then make it efficient and squish it down and optimize it. So at the beginning, for me, it's just research, right? Research, playing, testing, find, don't get so overwhelmed by the big picture that you don't take any action, right? Like what's the smallest possible thing you can just do to start gaining momentum. And then that first step seems impossible, but when you go back, it's like, oh, I did that. I did that first step. That's pretty cool. Now it's Evan, Evan's holding up the 2%. I got mine. I got mine too. Make the 2% happen. Anyway. So I hope that makes sense, right? It's taking that big idea that seems overwhelming, that seems impossible, and then finding one step that you can do today, because as long as you have it as some big dream in your head, that is impossible, then you never take any action on it. And then, you know, it's a year later and you still haven't done the thing yet because it still seems too impossible. And I see it all the time with entrepreneurs who are getting started. People ask me, how do I get started on YouTube? How do I get started as an author? How do I get started as a speaker? And you think you've got to have this perfect plan and the perfect gear and all of this perfect stuff. And then it's a year later and you still haven't done the thing. Immediate action, momentum. I see Zane's big smiling. Zan joined me on my— 3 days a week now I stream League of Legends and answer business questions. And Zan joined in and he said, "Yeah, I'm going to start making YouTube videos." And I forget what his original timeline was, like next month or in 2 months or something. I said, "Dude, Zan, come on tonight, make a video. Let's go. Get your video up." And then he did, and he got his first video up and then the second video and then another video. He's got his phone out. He's going to make another video right now. That's the process. And it's not going to be perfect being off your phone and it's not going to be the lighting that you want or the gear that you want or the background that you want. And your thoughts may not come out as clearly as you want. That's the beginning. Like the beginning is supposed to be messy. So don't stress out about having all the information at the beginning. Just go, just create. Like in that momentum, you will start getting some results and additional momentum to keep on building. Right. And I think a lot of you know my story about losing that $40 million deal when I was 22 years old, of just trying to be too perfect and have it all planned out and, you know, going to market and then seeing, oh, my perfect plan was not what people wanted anyway. Right? Like your perfect version of a YouTube video is not going to be perfect anyway. Once you start creating, it's going to change. It's going to take a million different turns. So the best way to do it is to do it. So to take action against that big idea. So it doesn't just stay, uh, doesn't just stay an idea for you forever. Okay. Next question. Nicolette said, what is your advice on where to start with content creation if you haven't started at all? So the easiest place to start is actually Instagram stories. Like easiest, easiest, easiest place to start is Instagram stories. It's on Instagram. They're 15 seconds max. It's, It's meant to be informal. It's meant to be non-edited. It's meant to be kind of behind the scenes. And so if you're trying to develop that practice of being a speaker, of creating content, I recommend starting like ground zero. You start with Instagram stories and try to find 3 to 10 moments during the day that you can share. You know, you— where's my book? Built to Serve, right? You guys, you guys, you have this book if you're in this group, right? You've got it. Hopefully you've read it. It's not just some fancy ornament sitting there on your desk. Zan's got 2 copies. Victor's got his copy. I love it. Evan, I know, has got an entire shelf full of books somewhere there at the top. So, you know, it's about starting to share the way that you think to serve other people. You're weird. You're different. You're— I like to say you're a weird duck. You think differently. Your job is to teach me to think like you think. So some of the things that may seem super obvious to you, for other people is not so obvious, right? If I look at even your rooms, for those of you who can see, you know, your rooms, like why does Zan have Captain America shield on his wall? You know, why does Evan have Napoleon Hill on his wall and Andrew Carnegie? Doug's trying to hold up Built to Serve, but it's being blocked out by the Florida coast. Uh, you know, Why does Jeff have Steve Jobs up on his wall, right? Michael's showing Believe up on his wall, right? Like, why do you have these in your rooms, in your offices? It means something to you. And that may be like, maybe Zan's been a Captain America fan since he was 8 years old. I don't know. Like maybe that's just so natural, normal for him. But for other people, it's kind of weird to have a Captain America shield on your door, right? Like most people don't have that. So explain why it's there. Right? Explain why you picked up this book. Most people wouldn't know that that's Napoleon Hill up on Evan's wall. Right? So explain why he's there. Explain what that message means. And finding these micro moments throughout the day from your routines, your habits, what you're eating for lunch, what happened when a client emailed you, like the way you respond to things is different. And so that's your job. It's not about how fancy the video footage is. It's your job to teach me to think the way that you think. And sometimes this is hard to step out of because for you, it's so natural and normal because you've been doing it for a long time. But for somebody else who's watching you from the outside, it's, it's weird and different. And that's the whole point. And so Instagram stories, I think, is the easiest way to start just to get you into that practice of creating content. Again, you know, 3 to 10 different stories a day. It takes 15 seconds max. So, you know, at the minimum I'm asking for 45 seconds a day. Right? This is not a groundbreaking amount of time to create content, right? 45 seconds, 3 15-second stories a day. When you're ready to jump in and make it much bigger, um, I would look at YouTube as my primary home, and then I would split up the content to go to the different platforms. So when you can get to making 1 YouTube video per week, I want a 10-minute YouTube video every week, and it could just be taking me deeper, right? Zane has a 10-minute story about the Captain America shield. Evan has a 10-minute story about what he's learned from Napoleon Hill. Jeff has a 10-minute story about what that bullseye thing is behind him, right? You know, Michael has a 10-minute story about what believe means to him, right? It's just taking me deeper into it. But the Instagram content stories is the first way to just start practicing getting it out of your head, out of your mouth, and into the internet, right into the world. Um, once you can get to 10-minute video a week, that's where I want you to be on YouTube because those, that content will live forever. And then you split up the content to go to all the different social media platforms. So until you're ready to do that, Instagram stories, once you're ready to do that, then you can still do the Instagram stories, right? It's just add-on. It's additive. Again, the Instagram stories are 45 seconds a day. Everybody here has 45 seconds today. To record 3 Instagram stories to tell me about something that's happening in your life. And it's not— this was really hard for me at the beginning of making content, was it's not about telling me what you ate for lunch and just kind of vlogging. It's trying to find the message in everything. So if you're showing me your lunch, tell me why you picked that thing. Like, why are you picking asparagus for lunch? Or why are you having that donut for lunch? Like, why, why are you picking that thing? Like, explain to me the thought process behind it, right? I'm having the donut because I'm celebrating my 50th birthday or something, right? Like, I'm getting the asparagus because I have, you know, I want to live a keto lifestyle or whatever it is, right? Like, explain the thought process behind the decisions. I remember when I first got started on social, Twitter was, was blowing up and I thought Twitter was stupid. Like, this looks so stupid. People are just sharing pictures of their lunch and cats, and I have no interest in just sharing. I'm a pretty, uh, private person, believe it or not. Like, I have no need for you to know what's happening in my life. I have no need to share it. But when I realized, oh, this is actually thought leadership content, that the reason behind making this book or the reason behind having these pictures on my wall, it's not about me showing off, It's about me trying to help other people think the way I think so that they can improve their lives as well. So everything you've got around you is a story that hopefully has helped you improve your life some way. Now bring that back to bring— now bring that back into the audience so that they can learn from you. Like, why are you here? Why did you pick up Build to Serve? What was the biggest lesson that you got from it? All of these could be individual stories that again teaches people to think like you think. So Stephen wrote, why is it important to tell your story? Okay. So in Built to Serve, we talk about this, right? People need to connect to you. If they don't feel like you know what they've gone through, they won't listen to you. So, you know, Evan has shared a lot about his story with alcohol addiction. And, you know, you would look at Evan like right now and you would say, oh, this guy looks like he's polished and clean and knows what he's doing and has his life in order. And you wouldn't necessarily think that he was addicted to alcohol. And I know Evan's okay with me kind of sharing bits of his story here on the stream. So if somebody came and was struggling with alcohol addiction, and they came across Evan, and he said, hey, here's what you have to do, these 3 things. They'd say, yeah, that's great, man. But you don't know what I've been through. You don't know what it's like. You don't, I mean, I'm addicted. You look at you, you've got your life together. It's all sorted out. Meanwhile, Evan knows exactly what it's like to contemplate suicide, to be massively addicted, to have a lot of self-hatred because of the addiction that that caused. And so unless people know what you've been through, they won't listen to your advice. Evan has some of the best advice to help people overcome it, but unless they know his story about how he came through that, they won't listen to him. Because people will naturally think, well, you don't know what I'm going through. And so this is where you have to share your story, where you've came from, even the journey that you're still on, right? We're still growing. We're still learning. We're never done learning, growing, getting better and improving. But where did you struggle? Where did you come from? Because ultimately your purpose, like we talk about in Built to Serve, is to help other people who currently are who you used to be, right? There are many people who are, Evan from 8 years ago. Evan Tinsman. We got 2 Evans in the group. I like using that as an example, right? But there's also many people who are Evan Carmichael from 8 years ago, and that's who you're talking to, and that's who you'll love helping the most. You know, Evan Tinsman will love helping anybody, right? He's been, uh, an amazing human in, in the Movie Makers group and this group, even when we first did our session in Pittsburgh. He was bringing value to all the other people in the room. He just wants to help, right? He wants to contribute, which is fantastic. But helping somebody who is currently struggling through alcohol addiction, is currently struggling with self-worth, is currently struggling with potential, you know, suicide, he'll love helping those people more than holding the door for somebody at a grocery store or buying the Starbucks for the person behind him in line because that's who he used to be. And it's the same thing for all of you. And I'm telling Evan's story because I know it better. I don't know all of your stories, you know, in detail, but you've all been through something. And those are the people who you're going to love helping out the most. It just feels so much better. It feels so fulfilling that you represent hope to them, that when they see you and what you've come through, it represents possibility for them because they don't see possibility. For a lot of you, where you are right now is impossible. For where Evan is right now, it's impossible. He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be doing the stuff that he's doing right now. It's impossible. Evan from X number of years ago would, would look at this guy and say, there's no way you're going to be doing that. That's not possible. But he did it. And so have you. And all of you are here right now. And the version of you 5, 10 years ago would say, that's not possible. And so that's your job is to show other people who currently are you from 5 or 10 years ago, that it's possible, that there is hope, that you can grow, that you can overcome, that you can climb out of this hole that you're in. But without sharing your story, to the question that Stephen asked, without sharing your story, uh, nobody's gonna listen to you. So you've got all this great information, you've got the knowledge, the tools, the, the desire to help, the willingness, all of it, and you can help, and you know that it can help, but nobody's going to listen to you because they feel like you don't know what you're talking about, because you haven't been through what I've been through. Right? So that's why it's super important to share your story. And, and it's scary. It's scary to share your story. It's scary to put it out there. It's scary for people to know what you've been through. You know, like, using Evan again as an example, he has a super successful practice in insurance. And it could be scary to let that out to have clients, have customers, have partners, have people in the community know that you almost killed yourself when you were addicted to alcohol, right? Like, now you're not normal anymore. Now you don't fit in maybe as much anymore. It could be scary for people to know what you've been through. But if you are silent, it perpetuates the silence. It means everybody else who's struggling with it, they stay silent too, and they become afraid to share. And your willingness to share, to be brave, to be courageous, to put your story out there inspires other people to say, hey, I'm not alone. I'm not the only one going through this. And it's okay to share my story too. So I see that as your, all of you, your responsibility to be able to do that. So, okay, Esmeralda's here. How do I overcome the fear of being in front of the camera or sharing pictures of myself? Well, where's Esmeralda? Esmeralda, we could do it right now. It's called turning on your camera. Hey, we got lots of people. Hey, there she is. Esmeralda.

Woo.

It's one step. Look at all the high fives and fist bumps and flexes you're getting, right? I mean, that's, that's the start. Uh, so I do a couple of things. One is I tell myself that being afraid is not a good enough reason. You don't want to teach yourself that I'm afraid and I don't do it. I'm afraid and I play small. I'm afraid to chase down my dream. And then I don't go for it because that becomes this negative cycle that we repeat. And I love that you're like in a grocery store or convenience store or somewhere there while they're all still tuning in to the live. It's amazing. But being afraid is not a good enough reason. If you can catch it, like the reason I want to do this, but I'm afraid, that just mental breakdown that wall, being afraid is no longer a good enough reason. 'Cause everything that you want out of life is on the other side of what you're afraid of. Every growth, every opportunity, every breakthrough, every client, like everything you want to do comes from doing things that you're afraid of. Otherwise, if you're never afraid, then what? Then you, you stay stuck doing what you're doing. You just stay inside your comfort zone. It's just your life photocopying every single day. Are you at your job? That's amazing. I think she's working there. That's awesome. Esmeralda joining in. I remember when I had my— one of the only jobs I had was doing data entry at this company, and they wouldn't let me listen to music. So it was back when we had a CD— what's a CD, man? It's like the Walkman but for CDs, like a portable little CD player. So used to have that on the floor, and then I ran a wire through my jeans, and I always wore a turtleneck, and I ran the— I got an extra long extension cord for my headset, for my headphones, and I'd run the wire under my turtleneck and just pop out here to get one little sound bud to go into my ear so I can listen to some, uh, mostly Andrea Bocelli at the time while I was doing this super boring data entry work. So I love it. I love, I love the hacks. Um, okay. So to that question, one is fear alone is not a good enough reason. The second part is you're trying to serve. You're trying to serve. You want to help. You're doing this, you know, you're afraid to get in front of the camera, but why do you want to get in front of the camera? Take it from, I want to— it's not about you being seen. It's not about you being this big famous name. It's about you have a message that can help people. You're here trying to serve. And whenever I flip it to, it's about the audience, it's about the people who will see this, is that even if only 5 people see this video, maybe 2 out of those 5 people, this could actually be something life-changing for them. It's not about you. It's about them. That always gives me that extra little bit of of confidence and push to go off and do the thing that, that I'm afraid to do. So I balance it between those two things, right? I'll tell myself, I'm Evan Carmichael. I do difficult things, or I do scary things, or I do the things I'm afraid of. Plus I'm here to serve and I'm here to help. And my message can hopefully touch somebody today. It may not, but it's your intention going in. Like the intention behind the action of being in front of the camera is not to screw people over. It's not just to make yourself famous. It's to try to help, it's to try to serve. And so I always take that mindset going in before, whenever I'm super nervous or before I'm ever making any piece of content. It helps when you're even filming your own YouTube videos, because sometimes it's hard when you're at home in an office, maybe with Corona, you haven't seen any humans for the last little bit and interact with them. And you just, even here, I'm talking to just to a camera and it's awesome to be able to see your faces up here on the screen. To remind yourself that, hey, this is a video that's not just me in my office by myself. You're making this video to try to touch somebody else's life. And when you take that as an intention, your video will be better. When you're just focused on, oh, am I looking at the camera? And is my mic set up? And all this other stuff, your video won't be as good compared to if you actually picture somebody in your head. I used to do this all the time because I had a hard time getting into the zone when I was making content. I would picture somebody and I'm making this video for him. This video is just for him and I'm speaking to him. And then I would channel him as I pressed record on my camera and it always ended up getting a much better video. Man, time flies. It's crazy. We're already at time. Let's get to, let's get to like super rapid fire. How to deliver the idea message in a simple way. Oh, hot chocolate readings. I would, I would do a 30-second hot chocolate reading every day and post it to Instagram. Instagram. Hot chocolate reading of the day, and then whatever, whatever the— whatever comes up every day, right? Every day for 30 seconds. Um, from Denise, what type of videos go viral in your opinion? If, you know, if I had a recipe for making a viral video every time, that'd be amazing. Like, that's what everybody's going after. But really, I'd be looking at make the video that you from 5 years ago badly needs. right? Make the video that the you from 5 or 10 years ago badly needs. Because the you from 5 or 10 years ago probably wouldn't watch an Evan Carmichael video. Like, oh, that guy, he's too energetic. He's too positive. That can't be real. I don't know. You know, like you don't want to listen to those guys, but you could, you could touch you from 5 or 10 years ago in a way that Evan Carmichael or Tony Robbins or Brendon Burchard or whoever else, can't. And that's, I think, even much more important than worrying about a viral video that blows up on the internet, is having an impactful video that changes somebody's life. So I'm still trying to make the content that, that I need right now, but also that like 5 years ago Evan still needs. So that's always kind of in the back of my head as well. Evan Tinsman saying disagree. Ooh, okay. Your content helped get this Evan to where he is now. Well, I love it. Thank you, Evan. Appreciate the love, man. Um, love that 5 to 10 years ago idea. Brilliant. Yeah. Just imagine you from 5 or 10 years ago or somebody who is like you and you're making content for that person because, you know, again, Jeff from 5 or 10 years ago is thinking a different way. He's not, doesn't have as much of a growth mindset, is, not wanting to listen to a lot of the messages that are being put up there. You know, he would look at what you're doing now and say, that's crazy. You know, with books on the shelf and bullseye and all these goals and accomplished, like you wouldn't think that that would be possible. And so you can reach Jeff from 5 or 10 years ago in a way that nobody else can.

What I'm looking to do is try to get some more insight on a new role that I'm going to be playing at a startup. So that's why I thought maybe it might be helpful more with yourself. It's not to do with blogging or anything. It's part of an accelerator program. So a little bit of that is, is getting out of my comfort level and, and being exposed to startups, but further wanted to learn, you know, kind of— I've read the book and kind of need a little bit more help in terms of being able to structure my career path. I'd say, and understand how I can be of service to these institutions based on the experience I have with 20-plus years in real estate. And what I'm going into is real estate technology startups.

Cool.

That's one question that's kind of come up to my— in my head.

So what are you doing at the incubator?

I'm assisting, um, I'm actually co-running it.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, it's with DMZ in, in our neighborhood in Toronto.

Oh, you're in Toronto? Cool. Out of, uh, out of, uh, uh, Ryerson.

Well, I I don't even know what they call themselves now, but yeah, Ryerson.

Yeah, it's not Ryerson anymore. Metropolitan University or something.

Yeah.

And so is that what you want to do? You want to like go co-found more?

I'd like to, I'd like to. This is something new and, you know, opportunities came about and something I've been working on and it's taken about 2 years to be able to find a venture VC to co-back this. And we're going to be starting up in September. I'm going to be visiting the office later today. But that's something where I thought I would be able to try to find out if I can get some help from Zan or from you, just in terms of understanding, again, how can I make an impact? Because a lot of things you're saying are, are really coming into, into play here in terms of being able to provide a service and making sure that I have the opportunity to grow and learn in that role, if that makes any sense.

Yeah. Most incubators don't work.

Yeah.

And most companies at incubators don't work. And so if you're looking for like next stage in life and what to do after, like that, if you make it work, you'll have unlimited opportunities to join other incubators, to start new incubators. The key is like, make this one thing work.

Right.

For the entrepreneurs coming in, they struggle with, um, the biggest thing they struggle with is closing sales. Like, they struggle with getting their product, depending on what stage, but it's usually, it's incubators, it's early stage.

It's early stage, yeah.

So like, yeah, it's one, getting, getting their MVP, getting their minimal viable product like created, and then bringing in revenue. The businesses shut down because they can't generate sustainable cash flow.

Right.

So, you know, if you're in real estate, you understand the cash flow.

And sales. Yeah. And try to utilize the network is what you're saying.

Yeah. So helping them get to the point where they're at least covering their costs so that they can hang around long enough to blow up. Like so many entrepreneurs are focused on, I'm going to go change the world with my new tech startup. Cool.

Yeah.

Let's get you to the point where you can stay sustainable. What are those first sales that we need to bring in? And whether that's you making introductions to people, it's a big reason why people would join an incubator, you know, you're gonna introduce them to somebody that's gonna help, or if you're gonna just stay on them and train them, like helping them with their pitch, helping them with their decks, helping them on the phone, helping them do the follow-ups, helping them become salespeople. A lot of tech startups suck at sales because they're—

Yeah, that's what I'm finding.

You know, but they did enough to get into the incubator. So they sold themselves enough to get in there. So they've got something, but it's that combination of the training to do better sales, even the accountability. Like if you help them stay— entrepreneurs suck with accountability, right?

Yeah.

So like they say they're gonna do something and they don't do it. See, Evan, or are you saying that's me? I don't know.

No, no, I'm writing this down now.

I want to grab his hand up, but entrepreneurs suck with accountability, especially at the beginning where they have no idea. Then this is their first thing. So helping them with that, like coming in and setting— what's our sales plan, guys? What's our what? What's our sales plan? Yeah, right. And then helping them actually create one and stick to it and making sure that they're doing the thing that they said they were going to do, not just going into the tech that they love geeking out over, and you helping make introductions for them allows them to have success, which then allows the incubator to have success, which then allows you to go wherever you want to go afterwards.

Got it. Yeah, it's helpful. I appreciate that.

Yeah, um, there's the whole motivation side to like you bring in guest speakers and all that kind of stuff, but really it's like get them, get them to a sustainable business And then get them to going off and changing the world and sales plan and introductions. So like for every business, identify their ideal clients and then look up your network and also friends of friends who might be able to come in and either buy from them or at least give them honest feedback of where they're falling down. Like people will take a meeting because they love supporting the university and they love supporting incubators. They'll take the meeting if you reach out and it may not become a client, but at least you get really good feedback and they may not know how to do that. So if you spent half an hour a week with everybody trying to help them make those introductions, some of those will hit and you'll end up really having a lot of success there. And then that's it. You just have to make that one work and then you could be the incubator guru and go around the world doing it. Most of them fail. So you can be the guy who saves them. Yeah.

So in this one, it's interesting because we're being backed up by a large pension fund. So that's going to be a bit of a live case study in terms of the companies or 2 or 3 companies that we choose out of that incubator to work on.

Lean on them. Lean on the investors to say, hey, we've got a tech startup inside computer peripherals or whatever. We need, we need to get to these guys. Like, every company in their sales plan that comes through you needs to make a list of their top 50 clients that they want to talk to. And you might know some of them already, cool. And if not, you lean on— you talk to the pension fund. Hey, we need to talk to whoever's in charge of tech at Royal Bank. Do you know anybody?

Yeah, okay, got it. Yeah, I know where you come from. Is there anything that you recommend I, I read? Any of your material or anything in terms of— because this is kind of really pretty much what you are doing in terms of helping the startups as well.

I don't have a lot of good books to recommend. I don't really read a lot of books. I mean, Built to Serve is great.

Got it.

Yeah, I've got that.

So that's a good one. Required reading at the incubator. But honestly, it's just You just have to be a resource for them, like help them get sales. Like if they're coming in, they probably already have a mission and they're probably working on their tech, but how do they commercialize this? And if you have big, like the pension fund that's involved in your thing, cool. They're investing into tons of companies. Like the amount they're investing in you is so small compared to their entire portfolio. The problem is most people are not, most of their portfolios are not reaching out asking for help. And they have a deep network of people. So you reach out and say, hey, we need to get to whoever runs tech at Royal Bank to get feedback on this. Can you help us?

Yeah, I hear you. So saying leverage DMZ's resources to our advantage and network.

Yeah, like the resources as a network.

Yeah, exactly.

The tech guys need to know the— like, the startup companies need to know how to create their thing. Create the product or service, but right, the network to get it into the hands so it's commercializable, that needs to be pulling on DMZ, pulling on all the investors. And that could be you to help be the liaison for that. And maybe they say no, cool. But most people aren't even asking.

Yeah, yeah, you're right. No, you'd be the guy who asks.

Yeah, cool.

Thank you.

You got it. Maria was asking—

Thank you, Zen.

There you go. But you know what? This is very meta. This is very meta. Like what Zen just did here, you were acting like most of the companies in your incubator act. Yep, you're right. Hidden, camera off, not asking questions, but needing help. Or like, that's everybody who's coming through your company. They don't want to turn the camera on and ask for help and and talk about their business because they'd rather just stay tinkering in tech. And what Zen said, like, hey, come on and ask this question, and hopefully you get— no, I could have not picked you. I could have said no, screw this guy without his camera on. I could have like not given you good advice, but at least you took the shot, right?

Yeah, no, I agree.

So you need to be the Zen for everybody who comes in and help open up. Even if like Zen didn't have the answer to this question, he would have answered some other way, but The way he didn't have the answer, but he facilitated the connection. That's all you need to do. You may not have the answer to who runs tech at World Bank, but you can facilitate the connection for these people so that they can start to grow.

Got it. That's awesome. Thank you. Well, thanks, man.

There you go. Thank you, Zan. That's what it's all about. Salim was asking, what's the best way to get one-on-one clients? So honestly, the best way is through referrals. As much as I'm like a content guy and I love making videos and content, but the best way is through referrals. Like do a kick-ass job with the people who you are doing work with so that one, they want to hire you back depending on what you're selling, and two, they introduce you to other people that like, this person is so good that they want to tell their friends about you. And being— most people won't give a bad service. Like if somebody asked you, if you ask them, how good was my service? They'll probably say, oh yeah, yeah, you did great. But is it so good that they want to then, like, you're forcing them or guilting them to tell their friends about you? And a lot of times that comes from helping them beyond just the thing that you're helping them with. Like, they're coming to you for a reason, cool, but the concept would be their chief goal officer. Like, what are they actually trying to accomplish? And go help them accomplish that, right? So think about, I just came back from Vegas and I was speaking at an event And most speakers, pretty much every speaker, flies in and flies out, and that's their thing, right? Off to the next thing. My favorite thing is to hang out in the hallway afterwards. So I speak on stage and then speak so much in the hallway that Zane has to pull me aside and say, "Sorry guys, last question. He has to go to bed," which is usually Nina's job, but she wasn't there. So Zane became my Nina for the trip. And, and by the way, Zanina was very grateful that you, uh, stepped in and, and, uh, helped with that because I, I'll get sick because I'll spend so much time helping people in the hallway. Um, but if you think about it, like, what's the goal of— what am I being paid to do? Like, to come and speak, cool, but then I'm going to stick around in the hallway and help everybody afterwards because that's helping the client even so much more, right? And then you get hired to come back, and then you get— if they're thinking about who are they going to recommend to other people to speak, they're gonna, they're gonna often pick me because of the extra work that you're putting in. So it's not that you're not doing a good enough job, it's like, well, but they got a result. Cool. But did you help them so much that they feel like almost guilted into trying other ways to help you out? And so referrals is the number one way to grow a one-on-one client business. If you're a service-based business, the, the, the fastest way to grow it is through referrals. Now that doesn't necessarily scale, right? That's not how you build a $10 million company, but it's the fastest way to get going and get started. If we're going to use content, so if you look at Built to Serve, we tend to always focus on the thought leadership and the content, but there's 3 strategies at the back of the book on how to win, right? There's the Fast Passive Freedom, there's partnerships, and then there's thought leadership. And partnerships is basically what we just talked about. It's like referral strategies. Uh, for the content, the, the best way to do it is to do the thing that you're doing live on inside your content. So Zan wants to sell confidence coaching, he should be doing confidence coaching as part of his content calendar. We had somebody in Brandlytics this morning, uh, who was doing— she helps actors, uh, get, get into Hollywood, you know, and all the tips. And so one of the video ideas we came up with was her doing critiques of people's audition reels. So to get into a film, you have to do an audition reel and send it in. They never get feedback on whether it was good or bad. They just know if they got the part or not. So have them send the audition reel to her, and she'll put a— make a video on it, breaking it down and critiquing it and saying all the points where, where, where it's falling apart. Like, here's why you didn't get hired. I think we were going to call it like Why you didn't get the role or something. And she basically breaks down and tells you why you didn't get hired for the job. What's wrong with it? If she wants to sell those services, it's much easier to get clients with that kind of content than with, here are 5 ways to win in Hollywood. Because the fact that you can speak doesn't mean you're gonna be a great coach. So what are you trying to sell? And then show me you doing it. But the easiest way would be referrals. So I don't know what you're selling, Salema, or what we're trying to get clients towards, but go in even for free. So Drew and Jeremy are two people who I both invested into and trained the YouTube side of things, and they both have mid-six-figure businesses now. Jeremy started a little sooner. Jeremy went from being a stock boy at a grocery store making minimum wage to then now having a mid-six-figure business. And he's like, I don't know if I want to work more than 35 hours a week. He's like, oh my gosh, this guy, uh, he's spoiled now. Jeremy, if you watch replay, you are spoiled. Um, but how we started was it was a lot of free calls because he wasn't very good at the thing yet. And so we did free calls, free YouTube breakdowns, basically pulling up somebody's channel and do breakdowns. And that led to then some people on the free calls would have— would call him back and say, hey, that was really good. How do I— can I hire you? And that becomes the goal. It's like you ultimately want to be hired, but are you doing a good enough job on the free to get people to say, wow, I want— I want to hire this person to come back? So it's outreach. Zane had a great point today in Brandlytics where we were pulling up somebody's channel. We didn't know who they were. It's just like using them as an example. He's like, could you reach out to them and tell them to fix their thumbnails? And offer that as a service. Like, yep. Yep. Like if that was my business or Drew's business, you could reach out and say, hey, here's what's wrong with your channel. Here's what I do. I'd love to help you fix it. And some people might just talk to you for half an hour and take your ideas and run with it. Cool. And some people will say, wow, that's awesome. How can I hire you to do that? Because I don't want to do that myself. And then those people hire you, then you do a kick-ass job helping them. And then they find more ways to work with you and refer you off to their friends. So that's the easiest way. Service-based business, to get your company off the ground, is referral-based marketing by doing a kick-ass job for them. The content is the scalable way to build a business. Cool. So let's, uh, let's turn into some questions. Who's got something? How can I help? Put your hand up and, uh, let's go through. Lady Lexi, what do you got?

So when you were talking earlier about, um, the whole response videos. I was wondering, because you do a lot of those Shorts, or your team does, on your gaming channel, and I would really like to respond to it, get into it. So I noticed that on TikTok you can do some stuff like a duet or stitch, but what do you do when it's only on, on YouTube? So can I post a part of your video, like, uh, picture-in-picture What, what, what's the norm?

You need to use something. It's like the— these is probably Zoom where you screen share and then have you on as well and just adjust the size of you.

Okay.

Like if I were to go screen share right now, you— I mean, we do it in Movie Makers, right? I mean, you see my PowerPoint and then you see me still talking and you can— I can adjust the size of me to be whatever. I make it small so you can see the slides. It's not like giant Evan covering everything up, but you can make it that like, ladies, half the screen and whatever you're reacting to is on the other half. That's probably the easiest way.

And when it comes to title, would I say a response to, or would I create a more catchy title?

I would lead with a more catchy title. And then afterwards, if it's not working, you can always look to split test it.

Okay.

So for example, in Brand Linux this morning, we had a guy who was, um, he's a copywriter for books, for book marketing, and he's already ranking at the top for all of the like book copy marketing keywords, but nobody's searching for it. It's like, is it really small? People aren't looking book marketing copy. So he's ranking for all those, but it's not helping him drive his business forward too much because nobody's searching for those words. So one of the things he does is he does Amazon sales page copy. So when you write a book, you need to have an Amazon page and there's copy on the Amazon page. And we went together and looked at the 4-Hour Workweek Amazon page and it sucked. It's got like 2 paragraphs. There's almost nothing on there. So that could be a good video for him of tearing apart the 4-Hour Workweek page and saying why it sucks and how to fix it. So the video, if you look at a title in that video, it should be something about the 4-Hour Workweek and how much it sucks, as opposed to my response to the 4-Hour Workweek sales page, like something that's going to catch attention. So people will want to click on it. Now it's ideally not just tearing it down, but then giving feedback, right? Like, here's, here's how to make it better.

Okay. So I got a little inspired watching all the descriptions on YouTube.

And of course, you got inspired by descriptions on YouTube.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

With how people actually call themselves.

I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that before, ever. I got inspired by YouTube descriptions. Okay. This is great. You know that you're like obsessing over YouTube when you lead a question with, I got inspired by YouTube descriptions. Description. Oh my God, you're basically living inside YouTube right now, Lady Lexi. Okay, I love it, I love it. Let's go, what do you got?

Oh, I'm, I'm living in LumaFusion right now. It's a whole different ball game. Anyway, Zen calls himself confidence coach, and I've been looking for a while how to call myself. Today I was thinking about, um, calling myself Um, what was it called again? Inclusion influencer, because it does have the, the word inclusion in there. And I actually like to see myself as an influencer. It's way easier than coach, therapist, trainer, whatever.

Okay. So you're asking what I think about inclusion influencer?

Yes.

That's okay. I don't know that I would, I don't know that I would lean in on influencer. I think it, it's, uh, It still has a 22-year-old up-and-coming vibe to it, as opposed to like if you're actually an expert at it.

So like inclusion experts. I also saw inclusion creator passing by.

Yeah, expert or advocate or leader or like just something with a little more If it were me, something with a little more gravitas to it. If you know gravitas, with a little more stature to it, you know, than an influencer. I think people will self-identify as influencers and they might look for— I mean, if you're calling— if you're looking at inclusion influencer, it's something that nobody's looking for. Like nobody's going to YouTube or Google anywhere and typing, I need to find an inclusion influencer.

Right.

So, so now it's a branding play. Like, what do we want to call ourselves? Is this is not for, not for somebody searching. So like, if somebody's trying to find a confidence coach, then they can find Zen and they, you kind of get a sense of what it is, right? Like, he's a coach, he's going to teach me confidence. That's what I assume it is. If I go talk to him and he's trying to sell me dog food or something like that, there's something wrong here. So, but what's it, what's, uh, Inclusion influencer, like you're, you're, it's not immediately understandable. So it's fine. It doesn't have to be. But if you're going to then pick something that's not immediately understandable, then let's pick something that speaks to, speaks to the prestige, I guess, that you're going after. So if you're going to call yourself an inclusion leader or advocate, it just comes off, I think, more powerfully than influencer. If you want to get a copy of Built to Serve and join us live for our next training with me to ask your questions, you can go get the book right there next to me. Right there. I'll see you there. I'll see you there. Get the book. It's a good one. Much love.